The 3-point line for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at Moda Center had a discrepancy in distance at each end of the court that went unnoticed through four games over two days before Texas and North Carolina State were informed of the problem ahead of their Elite Eight matchup on Sunday.
The teams’ coaches agreed to play Sunday’s game as scheduled with the mismatched 3-point lines rather than delay it, the NCAA said in a statement. N.C. State beat Texas 76-66 to advance to the Final Four.
“The NCAA was notified (Sunday) that the 3-point lines on the court at Moda Center in Portland are not the same distance. The NCAA staff and women’s basketball committee members on site consulted with the two head coaches who were made aware of the discrepancy. All parties elected to play a complete game on the court as is, rather than correcting the court and delaying the game,” Lynn Holzman, the NCAA’s vice president of women’s basketball, said in a statement.
Holzman said all lines would be measured after practices concluded on Sunday evening and the correct markings would be on the floor ahead of Monday’s game between Southern California and UConn.
“While the NCAA’s vendor has apologized for the error, we will investigate how this happened in the first place. The NCAA is working now to ensure the accuracy of all court markings for future games,” Holzman said. “We are not aware of any other issues at any of the prior sites for men’s or women’s tournament games.”
Connor Sports makes the March Madness floors for both men and women.
Workers measure one of the two three-point lines and their different measurements after the Elite 8 round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament between NC State Wolfpack and Texas Longhorns at Moda Center on March 31, 2024 in Portland, Oregon.
Steph Chambers/Getty Images
“We apologize for the error that was found and have technicians on site at the Moda Center in Portland who were instructed to make the necessary corrections immediately following (Sunday’s) game,” the company said in a statement.
The court issue was another distraction for the NCAA during a women’s tournament in which the play has been exceptional but other issues have taken the spotlight.
There was a referee pulled out of a game at halftime in the first round. Utah faced racist harassment before its first-round game. Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo was forced to remove a nose ring and missed time in a Sweet 16 loss to Oregon State. LSU coach Kim Mulkey threatened to sue The Washington Post over a then-unpublished profile of her and later called out a Los Angeles Times columnist for what she said was sexist criticism of her team. The Times edited the column in response.
And now, the court issue in Portland.
“I hate to say this, but I have a lot of colleagues that would say, ‘Only in women’s basketball,'” Texas coach Vic Schaefer said. “I mean, it’s a shame, really, that it even happened. But it is what it is.”
Four Sweet 16 games on Friday and Saturday were played without any of the participating teams saying anything publicly about a problem with the court.
During pregame warmups, Schaefer and N.C. State coach Wes Moore were informed that the 3-point line distance at the top of the key was different on both ends of the floor. The distance between the top of the key and the 3-point line was too short at the end in front of the N.C. State bench, while the line at the Texas end was correct, Moore said.
NCAA officials were asked to measure the distance and brought out a tape measure about 15 minutes before tip-off. After discussions between NCAA representatives, the coaches and officials, the game went on as scheduled.
A delay would have taken at least an hour, both coaches said, because someone from the outside would have to be brought in to remark the floor and could have forced the game to be bumped from being broadcast on ABC.
“That’s a big deal to be on ABC,” Moore said. “We’ve been fortunate to be on it a couple of times the last couple of years. But it’s a big deal.”
Mallory Collier and Zoe Brooks of the NC State Wolfpack celebrate after defeating the Texas Longhorns 76-66 in the Elite 8 round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at Moda Center on March 31, 2024 in Portland, Oregon.
Steph Chambers/Getty Images
Both coaches said their players were not aware of the discrepancy, and N.C. State’s Aziaha James in particular had no trouble, making a career-high seven 3s on nine attempts. The NCAA said the court would be corrected before Monday’s Elite Eight matchup between Southern California and UConn.
“At the end of the day we had already played a game on it and we both won, so we just decided to play,” Schaefer said.
While the NCAA did not provide details, one 3-point line near the top of the key appeared to be about 6 inches closer to the basket than at the opposite end of the floor. The NCAA 3-point line is at 22 feet, 1 3/4 inches for both women and men.
The numbers showed that players struggled with the line that was too close to the basket.
Through five games, teams shooting on the end with the closer 3-point arc were 25.8% (23 of 89) on 3s. At the end of the floor that was correct, teams shot 33.3% (29 of 87).
“These kids, they shoot so far behind it sometimes nowadays, who knows where the line is?” Moore said. “It is an unusual situation. But, like I said, I don’t know that it was an advantage or disadvantage, either way.”
Baylor coach Nicki Collen, whose team lost to USC in the Sweet 16, posted on social media that with eight teams at one site, the focus was on game plan, not what the court looked like.
Baylor was 6 of 14 on 3-pointers in the second half while shooting at the end of the floor with the correct arc.
“Guess that’s why we shot it better in the second half,” Collen posted.
A GOP lawmaker in Michigan tried to whip up anti-immigrant furor by claiming that buses at the Detroit airport were being “loaded up with illegal invaders” — when it was actually basketball players arriving for the NCAA Tournament.
In a post on X on Wednesday night, state Rep. Matt Maddock posted two photos taken at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, one with an airplane on the tarmac and the other showing a row of buses.
“Happening right now,” he wrote. “Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?”
Maddock’s claim was quickly debunked by a Wayne County Airport Authority spokesperson, who told the Detroit Free Press that the buses, in fact, were for men’s basketball players in town for the NCAA Tournament. X users also added context to the lawmaker’s post, including tweets from a local reporter and the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, which landed in Detroit that evening.
But Maddock doubled down.
“100,000’s of illegals are pouring into our country. We know it’s happening in Michigan. Our own governor is offering money to take them in!” he wrote in part on X, referring to a Michigan program that offers rent subsidies to residents if they help house refugees and other new arrivals to the state.
The Republican lawmaker also replied to several X users by calling them “kommie.”
The Republican lawmaker also replied to several X users by calling them “kommie.”
Maddock has long parroted Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. He’s married to Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan GOP and one of the 16 people charged in connection with the “fake electors” scheme in her state in 2020. (She has pleaded not guilty.)
Like Trump and many of his fellow Republicans, Matt Maddock has been a strident critic of federal immigration policy. And he’s so intent on making his point that it appears he’s willing to ignore the facts: When reached by The Associated Press, Maddock refused to admit that the buses were for basketball players.
“I haven’t heard a good answer yet,” he wrote in a text message to the AP. “I took a tip and asked because this is happening in many places and it is well documented.”
Hip-hop mogul Ice Cube announced Wednesday that his BIG3 basketball organization offered superstar college player Caitlin Clark $5 million to suit up for the league.
Calling it a “historic offer” to a “generational athlete,” Ice Cube said he’s still waiting for the University of Iowa guard to respond to the opportunity.
The rapper and actor is a co-founder of BIG3, the 3-on-3 league that attracts former NBA players and international players, and confirmed the offer while responding to a TMZ story on X.
“We intended the offer to remain private while Caitlin Clark plays for the championship. But I won’t deny what’s now already out there: BIG3 made a historic offer to Caitlin Clark. Why wouldn’t we?,” Ice Cube wrote. “Caitlin is a generational athlete who can achieve tremendous success in the BIG3.”
Ice Cube, 54, whose name is O’Shea Jackson, said on X the BIG3 has already broken barriers by offering women head coaching jobs.
“The skeptics laughed when we made Nancy Lieberman the first female coach of a men’s pro team, and she won the championship in her first year. Then Lisa Leslie won it all in year two. With our offer, Caitlin Clark can make history and break down even more barriers for women athletes.”
Representatives for Ice Cube and Clark were not immediately reached by NBC News on Wednesday afternoon.
Ice Cube said on the “Pat McAfee Show” on Wednesday the BIG3 has not yet heard back from Clark.
“We just need an answer, as soon as they are ready to give it to us,” he said.
He added: “It’s always 50-50 till we get a no. At the end of the day, it’s a generous offer.”
He also said on the show he would not be doing his job if the BIG3 didn’t explore the possibility of adding Clark, saying she could take the league into a “different stratosphere.”
In February, Clark became the NCAA women’s career scoring leader against the University of Michigan.
Two weeks after she broke that record, she became the NCAA Division I basketball’s overall scoring leader, breaking “Pistol Pete” Maravich’s record of 3,667 career points, which stood for more than 50 years.
Clark’s record-setting performance drew huge television ratings, attracting more than 4 million television viewers at its peak and was the most-watched women’s regular-season basketball game since 1999, Fox Sports said.
In late February, Clark announced she will enter the WNBA draft this spring.
Ice Cube said on X that female professional basketball players on U.S. soil should have more options than the WNBA and should have a choice of avoiding playing overseas in some countries. Playing in Europe during the offseason gives WNBA players a chance to earn four or five times their American salaries.
“America’s women athletes should not be forced to spend their off seasons playing in often dismal and dubious foreign countries just to make ends meet,” Ice Cube said. “And they should have more than just one professional option in the US at a time when American pro sports leagues are being infiltrated by autocratic, anti-women regimes such as Qatar. Our pathbreaking offer to Caitlin Clark demonstrates that BIG3 now offers another choice for athletes.”
Clark scored 32 points during her team’s win on Monday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament against the West Virginia Mountaineers.
The FBI and police in Coeur d’Alene, a northern Idaho town that a local public advocacy organization has described as a “safe haven” for white supremacist groups, are investigating after the University of Utah’s women’s basketball coach said her team was targeted in a series of “racial hate crimes” while in town for the NCAA Tournament last week.
Mayor Jim Hammond apologized to the University of Utah women’s basketball team during a news conference on Tuesday. The apology came after Utah athletics officials said a driver revved their engine and yelled the N-word at the team, band members and cheerleaders as they went out to dinner Thursday evening. Later, as the group left the restaurant, two trucks came near them and the drivers revved their engines and yelled the N-word in another instance.
“We condemn, in the strongest terms, those horrendous acts of hatred,” Tony Stewart, of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said at the news conference. “If the perpetrators can be found, we call upon them to be prosecuted. There is no place in our communities or in the United states of America for such horrific acts.”
Police Chief Lee White said local law enforcement received a report about the incident the night it happened and are working with the FBI to speak with the victims and witnesses to determine which state or federal laws apply to the situation. He cited federal law, a state law against malicious harassment and a statute against disorderly conduct.
The team was in the area to take part in the NCAA tournament in Spokane, Washington, hosted by Gonzaga University, but had to stay in Idaho due to a lack of hotel space. Utah coach Lynne Roberts revealed the incident to reporters on Monday.
“Racism is real and it happens and it’s awful,” Roberts said. “For our players, whether they are white, Black, green, whatever — no one knew how to handle it. And it was really upsetting. And for our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA tournament environment, it’s messed up.”
Roberts added that the NCAA and Gonzaga helped move the team to a different hotel. Neither Roberts nor the women’s athletics department immediately responded to a request for comment. Gonzaga and NCAA officials along with Idaho Gov. Brad Little swiftly issued statements apologizing to the team and condemning the harassment.
Coeur d’Alene and northern Idaho have become known for its extremism and proliferation of racist groups. The Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups have terrorized the region since at least the 1970s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2022, members of a racist hate group called Patriot Front marched through downtown Coeur d’Alene. Thirty-one of them were arrested on suspicion of conspiring a riot, according to The Spokesman Review.
A local far-right activist showed up to Tuesday’s news conference, yelling about the Patriot Front incident. He claimed to be a member of the media but would not say which news outlet he was part of. Attendants at the event booed him.
The Idaho 97 Project, which opposes far-right extremism in the state, has called the region a “safe haven” for white supremacist hate groups.
“We’ve always had extremism in Idaho on some level, going back to Richard Butler and some of those groups in Coeur d’Alene,” Mike Satz, then its executive director, said in 2022. He added to KMTV, “We also have a lot of people who are just moving into the state who are coming here because they see Idaho as a conservative bastion.”
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In his hall of fame NBA career, Charles Barkley accumulated 12,546 rebounds, but he pulled the ultimate rebound when he finished playing, equaling—maybe even eclipsing—his considerable skills on a basketball court, with his singular talent in a TV studio. For the last 23 years, Barkley has been delivering witty, blunt, provocative opinions on every imaginable topic, often imparted with a smile; always imparted with i-don’t-give-a-damn-if-you-agree-with-me candor. Imagine Mark Twain with a low-post game.
As we first reported in March, despite his lack of a tongue editor, maybe because of it, Barkley, now 60, seems cancel-proof, granted license to go right up to that midcourt line of acceptability, even to stomp over it sometimes. It’s made him more relevant than ever. It’s made him more money than he ever earned playing basketball. It’s made him—dare we say it?— an American treasure.
Jon Wertheim: Why do you suppose people wanna listen to you?
Charles Barkley: (laughs) I think they know that I’m gonna be honest, I’m gonna be fair, I don’t have a hidden agenda. Not many people on TV that you can say that about.
Sixty nights a year, Charles Barkley is the go-to guy on TNT’s “Inside the NBA”
A pathbreaking, Emmy-dominating show that makes for riveting, unscripted TV.
Charles Barkley getting ready to go on air.
60 Minutes
Jon Wertheim: You have fun up there?
Charles Barkley: It’s just basketball! (laugh) We’re not solvin’ inflation, we didn’t just get back from Afghanistan.
Jon Wertheim: But you’re not a used car salesman either. I mean, if a game’s no good, you’ll admit it, you’ll say it.
Charles Barkley: Oh yeah, because the fan, the fans ain’t stupid. They just saw it. If I tell them that was a good game, they’re gonna be like, ‘What the hell is Charles (laugh) talkin’ about?’
Jon Wertheim: You said sometimes you’ve even fallen asleep on the set
Charles Barkley: Oh, I fall asleep, like, just sittin’ there watchin’, like, ‘Yo, man, this is just bad basketball.’
This is what America has come to expect from Charles Barkley.
Ernie Johnson: For Chuck, it’s just, ‘I’m gonna let it fly. And if you don’t like it, tough.’
Ernie Johnson is the longtime host of “Inside the NBA.”
Jon Wertheim: How many times do you say, ‘Where- where’s this goin’?
Ernie Johnson: We’ll start a show and Charles will look at me and say, ‘I gotta get somethin’ off my chest (laugh.) It could be something that involves world peace, or the Brooklyn Nets or it could be somethin’– he could be upset that his plumber showed up late, (laugh) and he just has to get it off his chest.
Charles Barkley
60 Minutes
But if Barkley brings levity, he also brings gravity.
Memphis Grizzlies star, Ja Morant, was suspended in March after this Instagram live video showed him flashing a gun at a strip club. Barkley used it to make a broader point.
Charles Barkley on TNT: Guns, especially in the Black community, the way we killing each other, is just really unfortunate and sad. And we got to – it’s always been a problem, but it seem like it’s gotten worse in the last few years – Black on Black crime and the way we’ve been killing each other.
Barkley may be at his most visible in the studio in Atlanta, but for a fuller sense of the man, head two hours west to his hometown of Leeds, Alabama.
Charles Barkley: I’m tellin’ y’all, I did not name the street after myself.
Jon Wertheim: You didn’t lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue?
Charles Barkley: I did not lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue.
Charles Barkley Avenue in Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
We interviewed Barkley in the home he still keeps in town. It’s a few hundred yards from where he grew up.
Jon Wertheim: You were angry that your dad left the family when you were 1 years old.
Charles Barkley: I was very angry. And I was even angrier cause he kept sayin’ he was gonna send us money, and he didn’t do it. ‘Cause like, you know, my mom and grandma were workin’ their behinds off. And the thing that was really bad about it, I was standin’ by the mailbox, like, once every three or four months.
Jon Wertheim: Waitin’ for the checks.
Charles Barkley: Yes, but they never came.
His indomitable grandma, Johnnie Mae, who helped raise him, still inspires stories when Charles and his buddies get together in Leeds.
Kenneth Venue: Shoot, Granny was the real deal (laughs)
Male voice: Actually, Charles is the spittin’ image of Granny, really.
Charles Barkley on double standard when it comes to race issues
00:58
Kenneth Venue: Yeah, he got that mouth…
Male voice: He got that mouth like Granny. Yes.
Kenneth Venue: …and she had one too.
Charles Barkley: So, we were really poor. We didn’t know at the time. So to make ends meet, she sold alcohol (laughter).
Jon Wertheim: Where? (laugh)
Charles Barkley: In, in, in the house.
Male voice: Called the shot house.
Jon Wertheim: Out of your house?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. So people would come over Friday and Saturday and play cards. Everybody starts drinkin’. Once somebody lose their money, there’s gonna be a fight. (LAUGH) So my grandmother, this little old lady, she’s walkin’ around with a six-shooter. (LAUGH) And she’s keepin’ the peace. I didn’t even know any better, Jon. I thought this was normal stuff.
Jon Wertheim: Woah…
Charles Barkley: Yeah. Think it’s time for a new floor (laughs)
Jon Wertheim and Charles Barkley walk through Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
Barkley also took us to his old junior high gym. It stands (barely) as a symbol of how far he’s come.
Jon Wertheim: 14, 15-year-old Charles Barkley walking in here. Who’s that kid?
Charles Barkley: He’s a 5’9″, 5’10”, big boned, not fat, big boned, chubby, whatever word you wanna use. I’m a 5’10” backup point guard.
Jon Wertheim: You remember s– specific plays and shots from playin’ here? Tie game. We got you on the wing.
Charles Barkley: No. Well, first of all, if it was tie game, I’m not gonna be in the game. Let’s (laugh) get that out– let’s get that out the way.
A six-inch growth spurt helped turn Barkley into a high school basketball star, but his formative teenage experience came at the school football stadium.
Charles Barkley: Wow.
This is where he stood along, at a distance, watching his classmates graduate.
Charles Barkley: I flunked Spanish, so I didn’t graduate. I was at home all by myself, devastated. And I drove around the backside here, and I stood here for two hours and watched the graduation. And I cried the whole time. Even now, it’s kinda hittin’ me in a, in the heart a little bit. Man, what a traumatic night that was.
Jon Wertheim: You remember the name of the teacher?
Charles Barkley: Ms. Gomez. I’ll never forget that. And Ms. Gomez, when I go back and think, was one of the sweetest, kindest people I’d ever met in my life. But in that moment, I was so mad ’cause, you know, (LAUGH) I wanted to throw my hat in the air too.
He graduated, thanks to summer school.
At Auburn, he was a star, yes, for his skills, but also for his heroic appetite. He embraced his nickname: the Round Mound of Rebound.
Drafted in 1984, he became a charismatic NBA star, for the Philadelphia 76ers.
He’s the shortest man ever to lead the NBA in rebounding, proof that— for all Barkley’s yuks—he played with fury.
Charles Barkley: I was playing to stick it to my dad, Miss Gomez, and some of the kids who had made fun of me, instead of just wantin’ to be great at basketball.
Jon Wertheim: What’s firing up this furnace is the anger you have for your Spanish teacher that flunked you.
Charles Barkley: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: And your dad.
Charles Barkley: Yes, 100 percent.
Jon Wertheim: What caused you to flush out this anger and get motivated for a different reason?
Charles Barkley: The spittin’ incident in New Jersey.
In 1991, he spat at a heckler and inadvertently hit a young girl. He calls it the low point of his career.
Charles Barkley: I got suspended, rightfully so. I was sittin’ in my hotel room, and I was like, ‘You are the biggest loser in the world.’ I, I remember saying ‘This is it tonight.’
Jon Wertheim: Meaning what?
Charles Barkley: I am only gonna play basketball ’cause I’m great at it, and I love to play. I’m getting’ all the dirt off my shoulders. Ms. Gomez, bye! Dad, BYE! That was really the turning point for me.
Barkley was the NBA’s MVP in 1993 for the Phoenix Suns. And then, months after retiring in 2000, he embarked on a broadcasting career.
Full disclosure, you may have seen him on this network working March Madness.
Jon Wertheim: What do you make of the college game today?
Charles Barkley: It’s a travesty and a disgrace. I’m so mad now how we can mess up somethin’ that’s so beautiful.
Jon Wertheim: How’d we mess it up?
Charles Barkley: We can’t pay all these players.
Barkley hates the new, wild west of college sports where players go to the schools that can bid the highest.
Charles Barkley: In the next three to five years, we’re gonna have 25 schools that’s gonna dominate the sports ’cause they can afford players, and these schools who can’t afford or won’t pay players are gonna be irrelevant.
Almost a quarter century since Barkley last played, his opinions, free of varnish, still matter.
His takes don’t always go over well. Kevin Durant, a perennial all-star, once said of Barkley, ‘I don’t know why they still ask for this idiot’s opinion.’
Jon Wertheim: Kevin Durant.
Charles Barkley: He’s very sensitive. Great player. He’s part of that generation who think he can’t be criticized. He’s never looked in the mirror and said, ‘Man, was that a fair criticism?’
Jon Wertheim: We’re in agreement today’s players are a little more sensitive to criticism than your generation
Charles Barkley: That would be a understatement.
Jon Wertheim: Today’s players take offense, but so have players from your generation. It’s been, been a while since you and Michael Jordan spoke.
Charles Barkley: Michael disagreed with somethin’ I said, and he broke off the friendship.
Born three days apart, Barkley and Jordan were once the best of friends, but as Jordan struggled as owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Barkley minced no words.
Charles Barkley: And what I said, I think that he don’t have enough people around him that are gonna tell him, ‘No.’ And he got really offended, and we haven’t spoken. But, Jon, I really, I’m gonna do my job. Because, I have zero credibility if I criticize other people in the same boat and not criticize my best friend.
Jon Wertheim: Even if you have nothing to apologize for, you think of just pickin’ up the phone and tryin’ to repair this thing with Michael?
Charles Barkley: I got a ego too, Jon. (laugh) You can’t be great at something, like, y– that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk.
Jon Wertheim: You think you’ll resolve this eventually?
Charles Barkley: He got my number.
If you really want to get Barkley going on disappointment, ask him about his daughter Christiana’s basketball skills.
Jon Wertheim: Your daughter’s not a basketball player.
Charles Barkley: That was, that was brutal. She was 6 feet tall from, from birth (laughter). I’m gonna have the best female basketball player in the world. I can’t wait till she’s old enough. I’m gonna teach her everything. And then we start playin’ and I’m sittin’ in the stands, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘Oh, man. She is not aggressive at all’ (laughter). So I ask her one day, I says, ‘you don’t like basketball, do you?’ She says, ‘Oh, Dad, I hate basketball.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay (laugh).’ And it took me a little while to get over that, cause like I said…
Jon Wertheim:…you’re being serious now?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. But she’s a great person and a straight A student. So I have to brag about that.
Jon Wertheim: I guarantee that makes you feel every bit as good as her hittin’ a game-winning jumper.
Charles Barkley: Not quite. But (laughter) it is close enough.
Christiana, now 34, recently had a son, Henry. The new grandpa says he’s never felt joy like this. When we arrived, he broke out this video.
Charles Barkley: It is by far and away the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.
Jon Wertheim: Lives up to the hype?
Charles Barkley: It lives up to the hype. I want to spend time with him, because I’m not morbid, I’m not upset, I’m on the back nine. I hope I’m on hole ten or 11, but you never know. I could be on 17 and 18. So I wanna spend as much time with him as possible. And then when he gets older, I want him to Google me.
Jon Wertheim: Google me kid…
Charles Barkley: Yeah, hey, yeah…
Jon Wertheim: Do you know who I am?
Charles Barkley: I hope he does some research on me. I’ll be long gone, but I would like him to know that I accomplished some things in my life.
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich. Associate producer, Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Sean Kelly.
On the basketball court, Charles Barkley was known as an undersized rebounding force, 11-time NBA All-Star, and Hall of Fame player. However, his best move may not have come in the post but post his 16-year playing career where his oversized personality has made him one of the most recognizable sports analysts on TV.
Barkley calls live TV “the most dangerous thing in the world,” and his blunt candor is a central part of his brand. When 60 Minutes profiled him for Sunday’s broadcast, correspondent Jon Wertheim asked Barkley why people tune in to hear what he has to say.
“I think they know that I’m going to be honest, I’m going to be fair, I don’t have a hidden agenda,” Barkley said to Wertheim. “[There’s] not many people on TV that you can say that about.”
The 60 Minutes’ team followed Barkley to a taping of “Inside the NBA,” where he has worked as a regular studio analyst since 2000. But to get a truer sense of the man, Wertheim also visited Barkley in his hometown of Leeds, Alabama, where he recalled growing up poor.
“We had to pool our money. So I got one pair of shoes [a season], Barkley told Wertheim. “My mom brought them to the game, and right after the game she knocked on the door and took them home. I could only wear them during the season because they had to last me.”
Jon Wertheim and Charles Barkley walk through Barkley’s hometown of Leeds, Alabama where he still keeps a home.
60 Minutes
One pair of sneakers a season turned into a pair a week when Barkley was drafted into the NBA and Nike came calling.
“I was like, ‘This is amazing…Wait, y’all are going to pay me too?'” Barkley recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘This is the greatest job in the world. Y’all are going to give me a pair of sneakers a week and y’all are going to pay me?'”
Despite the sneaker stipend, countless accolades, and sizable paychecks both during and after his playing days, Barkley has never forgotten his roots. At age 60, he’s a frequent philanthropist and has donated millions of dollars in support of higher education and college scholarships for Leeds students.
“The way I give money away is, I want to try to help people be successful,” Barkley told Wertheim. “Now everybody’s not going to be successful. All I can give them is an opportunity to be successful.”
Success for Barkley came during his senior year at Leeds High School after a 6-inch growth spurt changed his life.
“His stock on the college basketball market has risen astronomically,” Rubin Grant wrote in the Birmingham Post-Herald in 1981. “But just a year-and-a-half ago, brokers would have advised not to buy. Bad risk. Can’t bring any dividends.
That was when Charles Barkley was – by his own admission – short and fat at 5 foot, 11 inches, trying to make the Leeds Green Wave varsity team before his junior season. He was too slow to play guard and too short to play forward.
Forty years later, Barkley and his friends from Leeds still gather to relive the tales of yesteryear. With Jon Wertheim joining them on a February afternoon, the group recalled a 1980 high school match-up between Barkley and future University of Alabama star Bobby Lee Hurt.
Charles Barkley and his hometown friends gathered in February, recalling their high school days.
60 Minutes
“That was actually the turning point in my high school career,” Barkley said. “We played against the best high school player in the country [Bobby Lee Hurt] in the Minor Christmas Tournament. And at that point, I had never gotten a letter from a major school. This is Christmas of my senior year. It’s, like, ‘He’s too short. He’s going to have to go to junior college or a smaller level school.'”
Barkley’s friends recalled a packed crowd witnessed his 24 points, 20 rebounds and five blocked shots. Leeds won 74-72 and the doubters became believers. Months later, Barkley committed to Auburn University, where he played three seasons before the Philadelphia 76ers took him in the first round of the 1984 NBA Draft.
Charles Barkley (center) won an Olympic gold medal in 1992 as part of the Dream Team.
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Charles Barkley’s playing career included an MVP award and a pair of gold medals. His broadcasting career has earned him four Emmys for his work as analyst. But when Jon Wertheim asked Barkley about his successes, he wasn’t willing to take all the credit.
“I got picked to be Charles Barkley,” the 60-year-old said. “I just got lucky and blessed with a great body. When I’m at a hotel, those people who clean hotels work three times as hard as me and any other jock in the world. We just got the lucky straw. And if you think I’m better or I work harder, you’re just stupid.”
Barkley shared with Wertheim that he believes the true measure of success comes from the legacies we leave behind.
“There’s two things that are important: number one, you want to make your parents proud. And the second thing is, when you die, you don’t want them saying, ‘I’m glad that SOB’s gone,'” Barkley told Wertheim. “I want them to say, ‘Man, I’m going to miss Charles.'”
You can watch Jon Wertheim’s full profile of Charles Barkley below.
Charles Barkley: The 60 Minutes Interview
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The video at the top was originally published on March 26, 2023 and was Charles Barkley never forgets where he came fromproduced by Keith Zubrow and edited by Sarah Shafer Prediger.
